Omega Brooches--An Update

Last year around this time, I wrote about a bizarre little variant of the penannular brooch that is often called an omega brooch. They are shaped a bit like the Greek capital letter omega, hence the name.

My attention was caught by the fact that antiquities dealers and some reenactors seem to think they are Viking jewelry, even though I've never heard of any omega brooches being found in Scandinavia. I learned that they are generally associated with a tribe called the Mordovians, who live in northwestern Russia, near the Baltic.  Mordovia, now deemed a republic, is still recognized as having a distinct identity from Russia, though it is under Russian political control.

Recently, pearl, one of my most treasured correspondents, found some additional images of omega brooches on the Hull Museum Collections website, amusingly labeled "buckles."  Typing the following accession numbers into the search box will show the pictures of the brooches she found: KINCM:2008.6067.42, KINCM:2008.6067.55, KINCM:2008.6067.56, and KINCM:2008.6067.58.

The most interesting information pearl uncovered, however, is the location with which the Hull brooches are associated.  The British Museum, which had purchased some of the collection to which the Hull's brooches belong back in 1905, states that  the brooches were found  near Krasnoslobodsk.  Wikipedia mentions two towns by this name, one of which is in Mordovia. Pearl reports that the BM's examples can be searched for on their website, using the term "Efaevo" (the specific location of the tumulus where they were found).  Unfortunately, their web search reveals descriptive information but does not seem to include photographs.

So far, the omega brooch appears to be pretty solidly, and uniquely, Mordovian (although the BM and the Hull Museum have classified their examples as Finno-Ugrian), so far as I know it has no associations with the people we think of as Vikings. or with the apron dresses Viking women wore. (Thanks again, pearl!)

Omega Brooches Revisited

After my last post on the mysterious Omega brooches, I floated some questions about them on the Norsefolk2 list on Yahoo. Upon receiving no response, I posted the same questions on the SCA's Slavic Interest Group list on Yahoo.

Lisa Kies of SIG was kind enough to respond to my query. Unfortunately, her most definite piece of information was that the brooches aren't associated with the Slavs or the Russians, either. She observed that the one I'd found was Mordovian. She told me, "According to George Vernadsky in Ancient Russia, the Mordva were an East Finnic tribe living in the Volga area."

Wikipedia notes that there is a Republic of Mordovia located in the eastern part of the East European Plain of the Russian Federation. Wikipedia also notes, about the Republic and its residents:

The Mordvin people are a Finnic group speaking two related languages, Moksha and Erzya. The two languages have been dealt with at various times as dialects of one Mordvinian language. In reality there are two orthographies with parallel newsmedia in the Republic of Mordovia where approximately only one third of all Mordvinians live. During the Soviet period, school textbooks were published in each language.
....

Earliest archaeological signs of human beings in the area of Mordovia are from the Neolithic era. Finno-Ugric Mordvins are mentioned in written sources in 6th century. Later, Mordvins were under the influence of both Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus. Mordvin princes sometimes raided Muroma and Volga Bulgaria, and often despoiled each other's holdings.

Wikipedia goes on to relate that the Mordvins were later subjugated by the Mongols, and eventually by the Russians, leading to their political position today as a "Russian" republic. As Lisa said, though, they are neither Slavic nor Russian.

I'm not sure how to go about verifying whether most of the Omega brooches have been found in traditionally Mordvin lands. The vendors of such antiquities tend to characterize them as "Viking" (the ones I've seen are either 9th or 11th century "Viking") without providing the slightest rationale for such a characterization. No, I take that back. I assume they call the brooches "Viking" to improve sales. But that sort of "information" does not help to ascertain who wore the brooches, and how. Many of the antiquity-sellers don't even bother to state where they have been found, or if they do say something vague like "Northern Europe," as is the case with the Omega brooches listed on this page.

This page, surprisingly, is somewhat helpful. It refers to the item as a "Baltic 'Omega' type" brooch, says that it was found in the Lake Ladoga region and cites the following book as a reference: Sedov, V.V. Finno-Ugri i Balti v Epokhy Srednevekoviya, Moscow, 1987, p.292 fig.12.

That seems to confirm Lisa's belief that the brooches are associated with the Baltic, though probably only with certain Baltic regions and tribes. I don't read Russian, but if I can lay my hands on the book I might be able to puzzle out the captions on the illustrations and some of the text with Google Translate. It's a start.

Omega Brooch Mystery

A little while ago, I became aware that some Viking Age archaeological finds in Russia have turned up an unusual kind of penannular brooch that has been referred to as an "Omega" brooch for its shape, which resembles the Greek letter omega. They sometimes show up on sites specializing in the sale of antiquities: a nice example may be found here.

An American vendor of reasonably priced reproductions of cast bronze pieces who trades as Raymond's Quiet Press (no relation of mine; Raymond is the proprietor's first name) now sells reproduction Omega brooches. He claims that the one he's reproduced is made from an actual antiquity loaned to him by a customer, and says this about it on his website:

The middle one shown here is from a customer who lent us his medieval original from Russia (Lake Logoda [sic] region, 90 miles east of St. Petersburgh). These brooches were used on the Women's Apron Dresses. The shell and bead are original.

I have no basis on which to question his claim (or his unnamed customer's) that the old brooch that appears in the picture shown about two-thirds of the way down on this page is a genuine Russian Viking age find. My only question is this: Is there any basis for the claim that such brooches were, in fact, used on apron dresses? The Quiet Press blurb is the only place where I've heard this claim, and it does not seem plausible to me, given what I know of apron dress construction. Moreover, the only "apron dress" find I've seen documented in Russia is the Pskov find, which was associated with classic tortoise brooches, not Omega brooches.

Does anyone have any thoughts or insight on this subject?